


Threats, Treats, or Tricks

by Paper0wl



Series: Rod and Shield [3]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Supernatural
Genre: Clint likes air ducts, Gen, Kyria stops pulling her punches, Phil is a bad-ass, government ninjas try to do everything, no I'm not joking about this, weird is normal, welcome to the nuthouse - I mean SHIELD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-25
Updated: 2014-04-25
Packaged: 2018-01-20 18:58:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1521968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Paper0wl/pseuds/Paper0wl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bela Talbot sold her soul and should stop complaining that SHIELD can pull strings to transfer her contract to them; the Winchesters are curious about their future and how it relates to NINJAT; Kyria gloats over pulling a trick on a Trickster.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Threats, Treats, or Tricks

To avoid dealing with agents curious about things they shouldn’t be and to limit the opportunities for their prisoner to escape, they took the FBI chopper back to SHIELD. Kyria knew there would be additional paperwork involved in sending other agents to exchange the chopper for the Humvee, but entertained overly gleeful thoughts of giving it to the incompetent idiot who botched the Winchesters paperwork in the first place. As soon as she found that person.  


On second thought, maybe she should leave him for Coulson. She had a strong suspicion that any punishment Coulson set up would be worse than anything she could think of. Coulson was far more diabolical than his mild-mannered bureaucrat appearance let on.  


And if she had ever entertained doubts about that, they were laid to rest when Coulson met them at the landing platform, where, despite the limited about of time since being informed of their so-called guest, the senior agent greeted Bela Talbot by her real name.  


The thief looked more frightened than she had when Kyria revealed _her_ real name.  


“Huh. Never would have pegged you as an Abby,” Clint observed. He received a glare for his trouble.  


“I have put together a list of your known aliases. Which name do you prefer we use?” Coulson asked politely. “Of course, as I understand you might fall under the purview of SHIELD, we can always construct a new identity for you.”  


Clint and Kyria exchanged smirks at the startled expression their prisoner wore.  


“You’re serious,” Bela said in shock.  


“Always,” Coulson returned blandly.  


 

There was only one escape attempt, which Kyria attributed to habit rather than any real desire to leave.  


Bela got out of her restraints and put a knife to Coulson’s throat.  


As Coulson almost broke her arm, Bela didn’t try a second time and let them sequester her in a conference room to discuss the terms of her change in profession.  


“She really sold her soul?” Coulson asked. “How common a practice it this?”  


“Not very,” Kyria answered. “As far as I know, there’s only a handful that do so every year. It’s fairly obscure knowledge and not many give it any credence.”  


“And you are able to alter the terms of her contract?”  


Bela failed to adequately conceal her acute interest in Kyria’s response.  


She shrugged. “I’ve never tried anything of the sort, but seeing as I technically outrank everyone involved, I should be able to transfer title of the contract to me.”  


“You want to own my soul,” Bela translated in a voice laced with more than a little outrage and accusation.  


Normally Kyria turned into Phil when people tried to accuse her of things, becoming contrite and mild-mannered. Offering to poke at her heritage rather felt like poking an infected wound though, so Kyria flashed the unfortunate con artist a smile that was all teeth and tried not to enjoy the resulting flinch too much.  


“You sold it,” she returned easily. “And I can’t unsell a soul. All I can do is make it so yours doesn’t go to hell in three months’ time. I thought that was what you wanted, after all.”  


“Well, yes, but – “  


“You thought I could make your contract just disappear? Sorry, but it doesn’t work that way. You either get me and SHIELD or Lilith and Hell. Personally, I think SHIELD is better, but that might just be me.”  


Coulson shuffled his papers loudly. “If you accept our offer, Ms. Talbot, we will most likely assign you to our new division specializing in supernatural occurrences. I don’t believe the work would be all that dissimilar from what you currently do.”  


“Except I’d be working for you.”  


“Again, us or Hell,” Kyria reminded her.  


“SHIELD pays better,” Clint added, smirking when Bela tried not to look too interested at that.  


“What exactly would I be doing in NINJAT?” she hedged.  


Coulson turned a raised eyebrow on his agents.  


Clint shrugged. “We talked to the Winchesters. They were curious.”  


“They’re also a good place to start,” Kyria added. “They’re bad at subtle and manage to stumble into useful stuff.” She smirked. “They also seemed a little surprised to hear they work for the government.”  


Coulson had that bland expression he only wore when he was enjoying himself. “I’ve had a difficult time trying to deliver their paperwork.”  


“Sure,” Kyria agreed. “But, yeah, until Fury finds someone better – “  


“Like that will ever happen,” Clint muttered audibly.  


“– I’m head of NINJAT,” she continued as though her sometimes-partner hadn’t interrupted. Her appointment as acting sub-director had further confused things like partners and handlers. “When the WSC gets wind of that, they’re going to be pissed. Especially since I won’t ride a desk like a department head is supposed to. Then again, the WSC never liked when I went out on ops, so I think they just don’t like me in general. Morningstar and all that jazz. Good thing the Director usually likes me, and some days I think Fury enjoys pissing them off on principle, which is why I’m probably going to be head of NINJAT forever.”  


She had told the Director flat out going in that she _would_ still be going out on missions, even if with less frequency, because if he didn’t let her out, she might go Supernova from all the paperwork. In Director Fury’s favor was his lack of overt reaction that she knew about the codenamed contingencies about her. He had also agreed, without much profanity or protest, that she was too good an asset to waste behind a desk, so he _expected_ her to get out of her office.  


“My first order of business is to attempt to organize the scattered network of North American hunters, because I’m not sending agents out after ghosts, let alone demons, unless there’s an actual chance they won’t get themselves killed.”  


“So what would I do?” Bela asked.  


“Get in touch with any decent contacts you have, play phone-tag with antisocial, paranoid bastards, possibly paperwork,” Kyria added, because she suspected Bela would either be really good at paperwork or make the people who dealt with it cry.  


“And if I do this, you’ll protect me from demons and the like, as well as any past clients who might be dissatisfied with their service?”  


“We protect our own,” Agent Coulson informed her primly. “That includes preventing our agents’ pasts from catching them.”  


“Nat makes that difficult,” Clint noted with a grin.  


“Yes,” Coulson admitted with a faint grimace. “I tend to get the ones with the trickier pasts.”  


“You brought in Barton, and he brought you SHIELD’s most problematic recruits,” Kyria pointed out.  


“He performed quite well until he brought the two of you in against orders.”  


Kyria took pity on Bela’s look of confusion. “Nat and I had kill orders out on us at the time of our recruitment – SHIELD kill orders and Barton here was the approved assassin.”  


“And you worked with him after that?” Bela was appalled and made no attempt to conceal her disbelief.  


“He was honest about it,” Kyria remarked. “And he was surprisingly blasé about seeing me kill a demon.”  


“I was in the circus,” he protested. “Weird for me is normal.”  


“You’re _all_ weird,” Bela announced. “But I’ll take weird over Hell. What do I have to do?”  


 

Coulson was beginning to draw up Bela’s paperwork when they got a call that the Winchester brothers had arrived.  


“They’re not the type to stop without the whole story,” Kyria offered.  


She wished she got Coulson’s subsequent eye roll on camera. Such were exceedingly rare. “Very well. Brief them on however much you deem necessary. They fall under your department, after all.”  


Kyria didn’t waste the chance to get out of the small, cramped room and stretch her legs. Clint gave her a quick nod before disappearing, presumably into the air ducts. She blamed the circus for his fascination with small, high places. If she ever asked (which she had never yet been drunk enough to do), she suspected he’d agree.  


Unwilling to sit in yet another cramped conference room, she gave the brothers a tour of the facility. It wasn’t the only SHIELD location, and it certainly wasn’t the largest or most impressive, but it did the job. And it definitely impressed the two young men still reeling from the fact they had actual jobs and didn’t have to run every time they saw the law.  


Kyria idly wondered why and how SHIELD attracted so many former fugitives and outlaws. Or maybe Coulson was right and it was just him. She briefly considered it and decided, if anything, it was probably Fury and his badass pirate persona that lured in the seemingly disreputable types. Not that she going to tell _him_ that though – Fury would _not_ be amused.  


Clint might be though. And the thought of Natasha’s reaction to the idea was almost as amusing as Dean’s reaction when Clint dropped out of ceiling.  


“You weren’t lying about him and high places were you?” Sam said. She was willing to admit she was a little impressed that he remembered that, given that she had mentioned it shortly after a demon visited his dreams to barter his father’s soul and not long before his brother killed said demon and she explained who she was and why the demon was interested in them in the first place.  


It wasn’t every day you learned you were fated to be a meat suit for the devil to end to world. Even less often did the devil’s daughter impart this information.  


Then again, the files SHIELD had said Sam had planned on becoming a lawyer, so clearly he was smart, and you didn’t last long as a hunter if you weren’t observant.  


“You get used to it,” she explained with a shrug. It was amazing what you could get used it if you had the chance.  


If, after all she had lived through, _she_ could adapt to SHIELD, so could the Winchesters, so could the rest of the hunters. It wouldn’t be easy – hunters quickly developed a healthy distrust of authority. With good reason, of course, because ordinary police officers weren’t the type to believe stopping ghosts was an acceptable reason to dig up and torch graves. Getting the police to believe that _yes, I know about your missing person files, but only because I researched my serial-killing monster of the week_ was also a bit of a stretch.  


Maybe Fury didn’t actually like her, after all, if he was putting her in charge of organizing a lot of people who didn’t want to be interfered with.  


“We’re really part of SHIELD?” Sam asked, mingled hope and disbelief in his tone.  


Kyria smiled at the brothers. “Yeah. You’re officially in my department. I imagine I’ll be sorting out the bugs in NINJAT for a few years, so don’t expect much to change anytime soon.”  


“Not having to outrun the FBI is a change,” Dean said with a smirk. “So’s getting paid for ganking shit.”  


She laughed. “Glad you approve. It’s not gonna be all fun and games, you know. We want to know what you kill, and where, and when. Let us know about other hunters, maybe talk to them about joining us, too. Stuff like that.”  


“We can do that, right Sammy?” Dean said, throwing his brother a wide smile.  


“You want to organize all the hunters?” Sam asked with interest.  


“Well,” she dissembled, “not quite _all_. There are always some that are a bit – _fanatic_. The ones who _would_ be serial killers and nutjobs if they didn’t know about hunting. They’ll be handled on a case by case basis.” She caught the simultaneous grimace. “I take it you’ve met one?”  


“Gordon Walker. Thought Sammy was the Antichrist. Got turned by a vamp and we killed him,” Dean supplied in clipped sentences.  


“Ah. Well, Sam’s not the Antichrist. Human definitions vary, but angels and demons have a very specific definition for that, and neither one of us fits. Half-human, half-demon creature, also called a cambion. Come to think of it actually, there’s probably one around somewhere,” Kyria mused.  


“There is?” Dean said in alarm.  


“If Lucifer was supposed to rise on schedule, which would have been sometime in the next few years judging by Azazel’s actions, Hell would have wanted to have one ready. So somewhere in the country there’s a kid who was conceived by a demon. And the demons probably lost him. Or her, I suppose, but oddly enough, cambions tend to be male. And it’s very difficult to find them. Great. Something else I have to do.” Like she didn’t have enough on her plate.  


“You’re going to track down the Antichrist?” Sam asked. “Isn’t that dangerous?”  


Kyria shrugged. “Not the Antichrist yet. And with my father locked up, a cambion’s power is very weak. On par with a regular demon, I’d say. But it’s still just a kid, and with the Apocalypse prep postponed, he’s most likely under the radar with no idea what he is.”  


“What are you gonna do?” Dean said.  


“Find him – somehow – and offer to help. SHIELD protection, training, the works. It’s not his fault he was conceived by a demon.”  


The widening of their eyes suggested they made the connection. And, yes, she did see a little of herself in a cambion, but cambions weren’t inherently evil. Her desire to find and help the kid wasn’t a case of projection. If anything, it was an attempt to catch a Lily early.  


Psych had all sorts of things to say about that girl, and few of them good. She was doing better – Jake and Andy bonded with her over their situation, and it helped that Lily knew she couldn’t hurt Kyria – but she still tended to avoid people. There had been a rather unfortunate incident about a month in, where an overly curious agent had grabbed Lily’s arm. Kyria had caught the surge and revived the idiot, but as she had been across the compound, she may have blacked out a few corridors in the process.  


Kyria had gotten a one-eyed glare, Lily had gotten her training schedule increased, and the foolish agent had gotten bumped back to basic training and a Fury Lecture in why it was a bad idea to surprise unknowns.  


“So that’s what you do here?” Dean asked. “Track down people who might potentially end the world and get to them first?”  


“Not _just_ end the world, but that’s a fair estimate all the same. We’ve recently expanded into hunters and what they deal with,” she added with a smile.  


Dean snorted. “Yeah. We noticed.”  


“On that note,” she said, frowning slightly at them, “I don’t suppose you’ve encountered a trickster lately?” She was almost positive they had, but felt the need to be circumspect about her interest. As the only member of her family that she didn’t have a vaguely homicidal relationship with, Gabriel would take it rather amiss if she accidentally let the cat out of the bag on that one.  


The two of them started and exchanged glances. “How’d you know?” Sam asked.  


“He used enough power to leave a footprint, although it’s fading fast. Another couple of weeks and I don’t think I would have noticed. What did he do to use that much power anyway?”  


Sam scowled. “Time loop. Every day Dean died.”  


Kyria was stunned. “Why would he do that?”  


The scowl deepened. “I have to learn to let Dean go, apparently.”  


She burst out laughing.  


“How is that funny?” Dean demanded. “I died! Repeatedly!”  


“And I’m sorry about that, but I’m reveling in the fact that I finally pulled one over on him.” It had only taken a few thousand years and a Hellgate.  


“On – on – you know him?!”  


“Not human, remember? Our paths crossed a few times. I don’t know what he’s doing these days, but he’s gone by Loki in the past,” she offered with a casual shrug.  


“Loki?” Dean repeated in disbelief. “We got Groundhog Day’d by a Norse god?” He caught his brother’s look. 

“What? I do know some stuff without you having to tell me!”  


Kyria smirked. “I have reason to believe Loki isn’t his original name, but yeah. And it seems he’s still playing by the old rules.”  


“The old rules?” Sam asked, forehead wrinkled.  


“Yeah. I rewrote the game back in Wyoming and everyone else is playing catch-up.”  


Sam blinked. “Are you saying Loki knows what you told us about angelic vessels?”  


 _Of course he knows._ But she only made a noncommittal gesture. “Anyone with the ability can see it on you both. Not many have that skill, and fewer still bother to look. More importantly, however, he’s one of the few who knew me as Morningstar and didn’t hold it against me.”  


“Doesn’t change the fact he’s an asshole.”  


“Not gonna argue with that,” she admitted wryly.  


“Really?” Dean said, startled.  


Kyria snorted. “Just because I trust him doesn’t mean he’s not an asshole. SHIELD’s got a few of the type. Granted, without the homicidal pranks.”  


“He kills people!” Dean reminded her.  


“The world’s never just black and white,” she countered. “I’m living proof of that, if ever there was any. Especially now that we’re bringing in Ms. Talbot.”  


“You really can help her?” Sam inquired, full of curiosity at how seemingly casual she was about rewriting a crossroad contract.  


“It’ll take a bit of doing, but yeah. Especially after Wyoming, this is small potatoes,” she said agreeably.  


“The world won’t end if you screw up,” said a voice from inside the air duct.  


The brothers jumped and Clint laughed as Dean swore loudly at him.

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be a second chapter to the Jus in Bello piece, but it went it's own way. Probably because I tried to do everything all at once. 
> 
> Things look very different without the angel story line tying it all together. Also, I am rather opposed to killing off characters without a very good reason. (Supernatural kills everyone because they can and unless you're one of the three major characters, you don't come back.)


End file.
